


On the Definition of Insanity

by aprill99



Series: Overheard Conversations [10]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Papa Lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 06:58:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6944437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aprill99/pseuds/aprill99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the mask that Oliver Queen puts on it's sometimes easy to forget that he's carrying around at least five, and likely now more like eight, years worth of psychological trauma. In addition to that he lives with at least two identities and lies like it's pathological. Springer would have a field day with this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Definition of Insanity

Quentin Lance had once heard that the technical definition of insanity was to do something over and over and over again and expect a different result each time. Originally Lance had just thought that there were different versions of insanity. As time had passed, Lance had come to the decision that there was probably just a difference between crazy and insane.

Either that or both terms were synonyms that adhered to a much more floating barometer than any other measuring instrument.

If insanity and craziness were different, then Lance was pretty damn well sure that Oliver Queen fit both profiles. Not that he didn't have a right to be. Five years fighting for survival on a deserted island (or other places) while having to be on constant red alert would entitle anyone to a little bit of crazy.

Then there was the entire separation of just mental issues that had nothing to do with craziness or insanity.

The weirdest thing had been that immediately upon his return to civilization Queen had seemed like the same entitled rich boy who had been shipwrecked. That was the major justification Lance had used to stretch the evidence he had had that worked as fuel for his hatred of the Queen kid. Nobody who had been through that kind of crap could possibly be that well adjusted.

Further conversation with John Diggle had proved that the bodyguard had come to a very similar conclusion. Lance had read the medical evaluation of Queen when he had gotten back to learn that the kid's body was twenty percent scar tissue. A person couldn't just go through the kind of crap that caused that and be fine!

That moved Lance to his first assessment of mental issues. PTSD. Yeah. Oliver Queen most definitely had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He should at any rate.

That assessment was confirmed when a women named Harley Quinn broke out of A.R.G.U.S custody and decided it would be fun to make their lives difficult. The women was, to quote Felicity, "cocoa for cocoa puffs" but she was still apparently a brilliant psychiatric mind.

Oliver had captured her and turned her back over to Lyla's contacts but not before she had said plenty of disturbing things. "Poor Arrow," she had trilled. "He wears a mask and some damage now but he's still just a tortured little rich boy. Poor traumatized Ollie Queen. Pretending to be healed but just barely hiding the cracks.

"You think I have PTSD?" Oliver had questioned.

"I don't think honey," Quinn had simpered. "I know."

Oliver knocked the women out with a swift punch to the neck. "Yeah?" his synthesized voice had asked over the mike. "I do to."

Later on when he had gotten back to base and everyone was regrouping Felicity had leaned over the back of Oliver's chair and lightly crossed her arms over his chest. "I know with all of this you can't exactly go to a therapist," she started slowly. "But you know you can talk to me right? To any of us."

Oliver tipped his head to the side and looked up at her with a tired smile. "I know." He reached up and covered her hands with his, moving his thumb along her palm as the others filed out one by one.

"The thing is," he finally said when it was just the two of them and Lance. "I know I could talk to any of you, it's just that thinking about everything... dragging it all to the surface it just-" he cut himself off and then restarted. "It's hard," he concluded. "I just think it would be better off buried."

"A psychologist would have a field day with all of us," Felicity said after a moment of silence. She pressed a kiss into his temple and rested her chin on his shoulder. "Springer to probably. The ratings for our episode would probably even be pretty high."

Lance saw Oliver manage a smile at that. He used one of her hands to guide her around the chair and in to his lap. "I know I'm damaged," he murmured. Lance's ears had to strain to hear the rest of his words as he had already begun to move through the door in to the hallway. "And I am terrified that I am going to end up hurting you. That something out of my past is going to crawl up and choke you. And it may not be officially confirmed but I probably have PTSD..."

Privately Lance sincerely doubted the necessity of the word "probably" there. It was more definite he would say. But at the same time, he wasn't sure it could be called Post Traumatic Stress when the traumatic stress hadn't actually been ended yet.

"Shh..." Felicity hushed gently as Oliver's voice got more strained with each syllable he uttered. "You don't have to tell me all of what happened to you. But if I can help you then you need to tell me."

"You do help me," Oliver promised quietly. "By trusting me, by staying, by loving me... Just you being here helps me."

 

Lance was sitting in the new Palmer Technologies version of the Arrow Cave to join in target practice when he got a whole host of other mental issues explained. Of course, target practice pretty much qualified as redundant when it came to Oliver. The kid could pin a bouncing tennis ball to the bull's-eye of a target in the space of a heartbeat.

Lance had already had his firearms target practice using a silencer. Now he was watching Diggle and Laurel circling around Oliver who was standing in the center of the room blindfolded while they engaged in a training exercise. The two of them alternated throwing tennis balls between Oliver and the target. It was incredible really. The tennis ball would release and the second it fell in to line between Oliver and the target the bow string would release with a soft thwip to find it's target.

"That's it," Diggle said as the last projectile was pierced. "No more tennis balls remain to meet a fiery end for tonight." Oliver pulled the blindfold off and fired a last arrow, splitting the shaft of one that had already reached it's target. "I don't know how you do it man," Diggle said.

Oliver shrugged. "Five years of isolation without a better way to catch food or keep other things from wanting to kill me," he provided, leaving his bow in it's new case and pulling off his quiver.

"You can use a gun though," Diggle said. "I saw you at Corto Maltese. You were a perfect shot." Lance's ears perked up at that information. If Queen could use a gun then why the hell would he want to use a weapon that had gone out of use at least half a millennium ago?

"Guns have no control," Oliver explained. "They're reckless and emotional. They require a moment of giving up complete control of the weapon."

Lance almost wanted to protest simply because he had spent the better part of the last two decades with a gun on his hip. On another level he had learned something different about this version of Oliver Queen. This new him was something of a control freak.

It wasn't just in his weapon preference. It was in the way the kid sharpened every arrow meticulously until it was sharp enough to pierce Kevlar like tissue paper. The exact level of control he used to make each one sharp without damaging the metal or creating the wrong sized arrow head to go through the air correctly. The control was also in how everything had it's own place in the lair, and everything was kept organized.

The old Oliver Queen hadn't even been able to organize a school binder for homework. The new version had managed to live at least two different lives at once with three jobs that most people would consider full time occupations. Plus, while he might not have been a good liar he could at least remember which lies he had told which person.

Lance also got an unfortunate itching feeling that said that the fact that Oliver was now simply catching people and turning them over to the police instead of killing them took an extraordinary level of self control. For the sake of Starling City homicide rates Lance sincerely hoped that it was a level of control Oliver could maintain.

That hope was put to the test when Amanda Waller made the extremely bad choice of kidnapping Felicity Smoak. Lance had been on the other end of the coms link when Oliver had gotten her back. The confrontation had been short and bloody but remarkably non-lethal given the circumstances.

"Give me one reason not to kill you right now," Oliver demanded of Amanda Waller.

"We're on the same side here Mr. Queen," Waller tried to negotiate. "Besides, if you kill me in front of her, all you'll be proving is that you are still the monster I made you in to. The one I taught you how to be."

The sound of an arrow being drawn and released echoed across the link. "You're right," Oliver's voice said. It was so cold. Deadly calm and controlled. It was so much worse than it would have been if it was nothing more than uncontrolled fury. "But you didn't just teach me how to kill. You taught me how to hurt. How to inflict pain. And I can promise you that if you ever come after someone I care about again I will dedicate my life to destroying you I every single painful way I know how. And then I will end you.

He and Felicity had both gotten back safely, and Lance learned something important about control. Oliver had it in abundance, and somehow that was way more dangerous than no control at all.

 

The next set of issues was much more easily discoverable. In fact, it was really pretty damn obvious. The kid lived at least two lives at once. Identity problems were sure to pop up left right and center.

"So," Felicity said after one operation where Oliver had had to broker a meeting for the Russian mob. "So far your identities include Russian mobster, billionaire CEO, older brother, co-head of the league of assassins, and vigilante. We're up to five now."

"Nope," Oliver disagreed, turning her swivel chair around and kissing her. "We've also got Ollie who all of the press remembers and Ollie Queen who ran that fancy nightclub that's now run by his sister."

Felicity waved a hand casually that Lance saw from over the pile of paperwork he was going through for the precinct. That was the problem with getting promotions. Power in a bureaucracy seemed to increase proportionally to the level of paperwork you had to go through every single time you needed to get something done. Being a detective had been more of a happy medium.

Felicity was still talking. "So I guess that means we're technically at seven. You're beating out most people who have actual multiple personality disorder."

"Except for the fact that none of those are actual personalities," Oliver pointed out. "They're shells." He pulled off his hooded jacket and pulled a grey Henley on over his undershirt. "It's like," he mused. "It's like how it was when I watched Thea play dress up when she was little. I put on the business suite and it's like I'm pretending to be my dad. The arrow head goes around my neck and I take on the power of Ra's Al Ghul. I put on the hood and I'm the Arrow."

"The Green Arrow," Felicity corrected with a slightly jabbing finger. "We're being color specific now remember. Regular Arrow has been retired due to legality issues."

Oliver's eyes flicked from her face over to Lace who grimaced back in apology. If he had been able to do something to keep Roy Harper from having to fake his own death he would have done it. Unfortunately there hadn't been anything he could do when the Harper kid showed up with a mile long resume of petty theft and violence confessing to being the vigilante.

"Green Arrow then," Oliver conceded, pulling on a coat to protect from the rain outside. "Ready to go? It's probably not too late to do dinner."

Felicity stood and pulled on her own bright pink raincoat. "Technically I think we're closer to breakfast time at this point," she pointed out.

Oliver shrugged and suggested, "Breakfast for dinner?"

"Can you make breakfast?" she asked. "I mean, I know you can do fish and stuff but I always kind of assumed you were the kind of person who burned toast. Not that I can really judge given how once during college I actually managed to burn Easy Mac in the microwave."

Queen shrugged one shoulder and reached out to pull the jacket tighter around her shoulders. "I promise that I will not burn toast."

Lance huffed under his breath. He had personally been witness to Oliver Queen attempting to make breakfast once. Laurel had gotten the flew and Oliver had made an attempt to make her a breakfast she could actually consume. Dinah had tried to convince him to see it as Oliver finally trying to be a good boyfriend. Lance personally had seen a kid who nearly blew up his kitchen using a toaster.

"Excellent," Felicity said happily. She picked up the bag containing her laptop and then turned to Lance. "Goodnight Detec- I mean, Captain Lance."

Lance waved once and turned back to his paperwork. The top floor of Palmer-Queen-Smoak Technologies Consolidated was as good a place as any to do the work as any other desk anywhere else was. At least from the top of a skyscraper he had a good view.

"You're wrong" Oliver's voice drifted back from the door. "Before when you said there were seven versions of me. There are eight."

"Were you part of the CIA or something to?" Felicity asked resignedly. "Because there are still at least two years worth of bad things that could have happened o you while you were away and I have a seriously unfortunately large imagination so I could really come up with a whole lot of options and they're all seriously freaking me out."

The voices moved further down the hall and Lance could hear the ding of the elevator being called. "Nothing like that," Oliver said. "There's me."

"Of course there's you!" Felicity said. Lance could hear the exasperation in her tone. "I don't count that as a version of you. That's just you. To me you're all o those things and all of them are you, but you're still Oliver. Just Oliver Queen."

There was a brief moment where Lance couldn't hear anything and he chose not to think about why the conversation had stopped. He had a feeling that that imagination street would lead to a very bad barricade. Possibly it would necessitate the use of brain bleach.

"Thank you for seeing him," Oliver said finally, in a voice that was as soft and gentle as Lance had ever heard it.

Lance turned back to finish his paperwork, shaking his head.

Oliver Queen was a million and one kinds of emotionally screwed over. He had PTSD, probably multiple personality and or dissociative personality disorder, hyper vigilant, a control freak, habitually sleep deprived, and eight kinds of paranoid. In short, he was any trauma therapists wet dream.

But Felicity Smoak was willing to take on all of it. She encountered each bit of trauma one at a time and willingly accepted each one. She had done her own psyche evaluation more comprehensive than any professional and had decided it was worth it. Lance thought that maybe that was the most important thing someone could do for another person; decide they were worth it.

Shit load of psychological baggage, insanity, and craziness included. Because after everything Lance had seen, he had to conclude that they were definitely different things. Oliver Queen had each and everyone of them. He just also had a girl who loved him anyway to help him through it.

Really if there was one person who fit the technical definition of insanity among them, it was probably Quentin Lance himself. And wasn't that thought just crazy enough to work out?

**Author's Note:**

> So what did you guys think? I know there's been a bit of a gap between this post and the last one but school has been destroying me for a while now. There'll probably be another gap between now and the next one because I have finals. I was really interested in what Oliver would have to be like psychologically to be the way he is so I decided to write about it. How'd I do? comments and kudos appreciated! Review for me! xoxoxoxoxox


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